Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
Ghostface is back this time playing by the rules of legacy sequels.
Spoilers
In many respects this film is the best in the Scream series, it nails the tone between scares and laughs and manages to do both fairly well, it has interesting new characters that you end up caring about, and it does something meaningful with the legacy characters.
However, then you get to the third act and the film loses its way and loses several points from me. My first issue with the final was that it is incredibly obvious from the jump who the killers are, the film does little to subvert that and it all plays out exactly how you imagined it would. Secondly, the motivation for why the killer kills, that of them being basically an incel fan who can’t cope with changes to the franchise and so has to try and make his own film, the series of murders, in order to set it right felt insulting to me. I understand it may have been tongue in cheek but to me it came across as the film flashing the fans the finger, which shouldn’t be something the new franchise reviver film sets out to do.
If you put the third act in a box and ignore it then the film is much better. I enjoyed how the film developed Dewey, played by David Arquette, and gave him a fitting heroes’ death, though I think Gale, played by Courtney Cox, would have been a better fit for that plot beat. Speaking off this was the first time in the series I really bought the emotional connection between Gale and Dewey and I thought both actors brought a lot to their respective performances.
Overall, I would say a nice end for the franchise but we all know it won’t be the last film.
Pros.
Bringing back Skeet Ulrich
Dewey
The new characters
Managing to be both funny and scary
Cons.
The incel fan motivation
It is too obvious
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Another Millennial Reviewer 